Hudson turned about.  Running along the Jersey coast, he entered New York Bay, and sailed up the river which the Dutch called the North River, but which we know as the Hudson.  Hudson’s voyage gave the Dutch a claim to all the country drained by the Delaware or South River and the Hudson River, and some Dutch traders at once sent out vessels, and were soon trading actively with the Indians.  By 1614 a rude fort had been erected near the site of Albany, and some trading huts had been put up on Manhattan Island.  These ventures proved so profitable that numbers of merchants began to engage in the trade, whereupon those already in it, in order to shut out others, organized a company, and in 1615 obtained a trading charter for three years from the States General of Holland, and carried on their operations from Albany to the Delaware River.

[Illustration:  View of New Amsterdam in 1656]

%28.  Dutch West India Company.%—­On the expiration of the charter (in 1618) it was not renewed, but a new corporation, the Dutch West India Company (1621), was created with almost absolute political and commercial power over all the Dutch domains in North America, which were called New Netherland.  In 1623 the company began to send out settlers.  Some went to Albany, or, as they called it, Fort Orange.  Others were sent to the South or Delaware River, where a trading post, Fort Nassau, was built on the site of Gloucester in New Jersey.  A few went to the Connecticut River; some settled on Long Island; and others on Manhattan Island, where they founded New Amsterdam, now called New York city.

All these little settlements were merely fur-trading posts.  Nobody was engaged as yet in farming.  To encourage this, the company (in 1629) took another step, and offered a great tract of land, on any navigable river or bay, to anybody who would establish a colony of fifty persons above the age of fifteen.  If on a river, the domain was to be sixteen miles along one bank or eight miles along each bank, and run back into the country as far “as the situation of the occupiers will admit.”  The proprietor of the land was to be called a “patroon,” [1] and was absolute ruler of whatever colonies he might plant, for he was at once owner, ruler, and judge.  It may well be supposed that such a tempting offer did not go a-begging, and a number of patroons were soon settled along the Hudson and on the banks of the Delaware (1631), where they founded a town near Lewes.  The settlements on the Delaware River were short-lived.  The settlers quarreled with the Indians, who in revenge massacred them and drove off the garrison at Fort Nassau; whereupon the patroons sold their rights to the Dutch West India Company.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The patroon bound himself to (1) transport the fifty settlers to New Netherland at his own expense; (2) provide each of them with a farm stocked with horses, cattle, and farming implements, and charge a low rent; (3) employ a schoolmaster and a minister of the Gospel.  In return for this the emigrant bound himself (1) to stay and cultivate the land of the patroon for ten years; (2) to bring his grain to the patroon’s mill and pay for grinding; (3) to use no cloth not made in Holland; (4) to sell no grain or produce till the patroon had been given a chance to buy it.]